GAMEDAY CENTRAL – Georgia Tech at Pitt (Saturday at 12:30 p.m.)
By Andy Demetra (The Voice of the Yellow Jackets) | Inside The Chart
Let’s settle the issue of the name first, since it’s one you’ll be hearing more often.
“Jordan” is his first name. “Ponchez” is his middle name. Because of a clerical mix-up when he first arrived at Georgia Tech, Jordan Mason’s middle and last names mistakenly became merged.
“It just completely changed when I got here,” he joked. “I’m like, ‘Okay. Wow.”
So while “Jordan Ponchez-Mason” has a lovely melody to it, Jordan Mason is the man’s official, certified, PA announcer-approved name. Mason said he was unaware of his surprise surname until a friend noticed it in an online version of the EA Sports NCAA Football video game. The game was discontinued five years ago, but a group of diehard fans still update it with each team’s current roster.
“Somebody texted me a picture of the video game saying Ponchez-hyphen-Mason. I was like, ‘What? That’s not my name.’ My Dad was especially mad. I was just like, ‘Alright, I’m going to text Coach [Andy] Lutz [Georgia Tech’s director of player personnel] and let him know.’”
The Ponchez may have disappeared, but Mason won’t. With the announcement Tuesday that redshirt junior KirVonte Benson will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury suffered in the first quarter against USF, the redshirt freshman from Gallatin, Tenn., has moved into the starting B-back spot for Tech’s ACC opener against Pittsburgh (12:30 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech IMG Sports Network).
“You never want to accept a first-string starting running back [spot] with him just going out like that. But it’s next man up, so it’s my time to shine and do whatever I’ve got to do,” Mason said.
Replacing a 1,000-yard rusher like Benson will be an arduous task, but Mason has already given an encouraging, albeit small, sample size. He ran for a game-high 85 yards in Tech’s season opener against Alcorn State, highlighted by a 28-yard touchdown on his third-career carry. After Benson went down with his injury against USF, Mason carried it 13 times for 95 yards.
Head coach Paul Johnson can be a notoriously tough grader on young running backs, and he’d still like to see Mason seal his blocks better. Mason himself admits he never cut block prior to coming to Tech. But the Yellow Jackets’ 11th-year head coach has expressed confidence in his young B-back.
“He’s got a chance. He did some good things. He’s got pretty good vision inside. The running part is much better than the blocking part, as you would expect for a young guy who hasn’t played much. But I think he improved from game one to game two on his blocking,” Johnson said.
That wasn’t the only change Mason noticed from the Alcorn State game to the USF game.
“It was way slower,” he noted. “Once I got in there with USF and I was playing longer, it was totally different.”